Is Brian De Palma Derivative or Dazzling? Critics Andrew Sarris and J. Hoberman Duke It Out

"Brian De Palma has long been a divisive director. In fact, he even caused a heated schism within the pages of the Village Voice in 1980. As Metrograph's month-long De Palma retrospective closes, we're looking back at the film that caused critics Andrew Sarris and J. Hoberman to duke it out in the pages of the Voice: the erotic thriller Dressed To Kill. Side by side, they argue that De Palma's latest is "Derivative" (Sarris) or "Dazzing" (Hoberman), making for an epic, visual point-counterpoint well worth diving into again, decades later."

Weird that the inventor of the auteur theory would complain about a director's self-indulgence.

The story follows a Copenhagen police officer (Coster Waldau) who is seeking justice for his partner's murder by a mysterious man called Imran. He teams up with a fellow cop and his late partner's mistress (Hendricks) to hunt Imran down, but they are unwittingly caught in a cat-and-mouse chase with a duplicitous CIA agent that will take them from Scandinavia to the sun-drenched landscapes of Spain.